


hold your tongue and learn to forget

by adozendays



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen, Magic, Minor Canonical Character(s), wild mass guessing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-03
Updated: 2016-01-03
Packaged: 2018-05-11 07:29:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 276
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5618701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adozendays/pseuds/adozendays
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Speculation as to why no one remembered Jesse</p>
            </blockquote>





	hold your tongue and learn to forget

**Author's Note:**

> I read a WMG on the Buffy tv tropes page and this fic was born. And I only checked the wiki after it was written. Though if you don't count the comics as canon, this lines up.

Willow wishes she didn’t remember.

A few days after it had happened, she had tried to talk to Xander about Jesse, see how he was doing. They had been friends for a long time, all three of them. So of course, Xander had to be hurting. And if she could comfort him with some cookies and chocolate milk, then she would.

But when she had brought up Jesse, all she had gotten in response was a blank stare. All Jesse was to Xander was ‘that guy’. As if their years of friendship didn’t matter because Jesse had died a vampire.

When she had tried to talk to her mother, it had been the same. Willow had tried to find something, anything that proved that Jesse had been a part of their lives. Even tearing her room apart had turned up nothing.

In the end, she had decided to do what everyone else did and push Jesse out of her mind. And eventually, she did forget. Being a part of the Slayer’s circle, and then being a not quite human being in her own right took over, filling her brain with things that seemed so much more crucial. But of course, he was never really gone.

Years later, long after Sunnydale was gone, Willow learned what she had done. She hadn’t meant to erase him, but she had. Magic was a funny thing. Maybe she had been trying to protect Xander or maybe it had been her own sorrow causing what lay buried inside her to lash out. But she had been the only one to remember.

But she had learned to hold her tongue and forget. 


End file.
